By Stephen Gruber-Miller, Des Moines Register
Private colleges would be barred from receiving Iowa Tuition Grant dollars if they maintain diversity, equity and inclusion offices under a bill passed by House lawmakers.
It’s the latest effort by Republicans to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion programs around the state. Two years ago, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law banning DEI operations at public universities and last year she signed sweeping restrictions on DEI-related spending by state agencies, cities, counties and other political subdivisions.
“To be clear, private institutions can continue to have DEI offices if they choose,” said Rep. Steven Holt, R-Denison. “They just don’t get to receive taxpayer money in the form of the Iowa Tuition Grant.”
Lawmakers voted 57-34 to pass House File 2488, sending it to the Iowa Senate.
House Republicans also passed legislation last year that would have restricted Iowa Tuition Grant dollars to private colleges with DEI programs, but the Senate stripped the language out of the broader legislation that lawmakers ultimately sent to Reynolds.
The Iowa Tuition Grant is a financial aid program for students who attend private colleges or universities in Iowa and is based on financial need. In the 2025-26 school year, eligible students can receive up to $7,500 to pay costs associated with their studies.
Iowa’s state budget for the current year spends $53.8 million on the Iowa Tuition Grant program.
Rep. Timi Brown-Powers, D-Waterloo, said lawmakers are overreaching by seeking to legislate programs offered at private colleges.
“This is a gross overstep of us into the private colleges,” she said. “This will, if we implement this bill and remove the Iowa Tuition Grant program, we will see our private colleges failing across the state of Iowa.”
The bill’s examples of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives include “any effort to manipulate or otherwise influence the composition of the faculty or student body with reference to race, sex, color or ethnicity, apart from ensuring colorblind and sex-neutral admissions and hiring in accordance with state and federal antidiscrimination laws.”
The bill says that policies, procedures and trainings that are designed with reference to race, color, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation qualify as DEI programs that would be prohibited.
Drake University President Marty Martin, speaking on a Feb. 20 episode of “Iowa Press” on Iowa PBS, called the Iowa Tuition Grant a “school choice law” and said students should be in charge of where they spend their scholarship money. And he said the legislation is an intrusion into how private colleges operate.
“It would have certainly a chilling effect on speech, engagement, conversation that we believe is essential to the full formation of a student. So that bill, in particular, we do oppose,” he said. “But any effort to link the Iowa Tuition Grant, which has been a phenomenal success, phenomenal success for the state of Iowa, to these other policy objectives, is troubling.”
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